


i miss everything and nothing all at once

by sskkyyrraa



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 13:30:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2152518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sskkyyrraa/pseuds/sskkyyrraa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a short dedication to those loved and forgotten from michael j. caboose's life</p>
            </blockquote>





	i miss everything and nothing all at once

Caboose lived on the moon with seventeen sisters, a mom, a dad, a nephew, an aunt, a grandma, a grandpa, a different aunt, and an entire community of love and support. He is the fifth born, younger than his oldest sister by an hour. He is a quintuple followed by two pairs of twins, a set of triplets, and 6 individual sisters ranging from eighteen to one years old. He was never meant to leave home, at least not so soon. He was supposed to go to the college fair at the local high school, the one he had graduated from just a year earlier, and find information of the local community college since his sisters were either working full time, like Robin who had a toddler and had dropped out of high school, or heading off to college, three of his quints were going to be sophomores and the twins, Gwen and Britney were just starting off. However, confused by the crowd and unfamiliar faces mixed with his excitable personality, he ended up at the UNSC booth.

The first time and only time he went to Earth was for basic training. With the clothes on his back and a duffel bag of questionable necessities, he was ushered onto a shuttle with a few other tough looking teens. Caboose did not recognize them but he grinned to them either way and introduced his entire family to them. All twenty four of them.

He wrote a letter to each sister every week. The letters sent to Paris and Nicole are pictures he had taken and a couple of drawings because while they're seven and six, they're much more interested in things without words. He was not and still isn't good with words or even drawing but he tried to describe what gravity felt like where it can't be turned off, how the sun has a warmth to it, the horrors of a sunburn and the cool touch of aloe, the tickle of grass between his toes, how pollen stuffed his nose and made his eyes water, how the air tasted so much different than the recycled fake stuff they have on the moon (he could breathe all he wanted and no one could tell him he’s wasting it).

Things became scary and confusing at Blood Gulch. While basic had been simple enough endurance training and a test about something he had no hope of really understanding or caring about, war became real too fast. Caboose did not have time to write his sisters about the red dust of the box canyon or how the two suns never quite set or the familiarity of breathing through the armor's oxygen unit. He did not find the chance to write to his sisters about his ghost best friend or the scary girl who showed up and really shook things up.

He really wanted to.

O'Malley invaded like a virus, gutting out his mind and placing a seed of hatred and anger Caboose wasn't capable of before. He left behind an empty and broken shell, memories shattered and thoughts rattled, like wind whistling through broken glass. He could not remember who Church was clearly. He could not remember the sound of his sisters’ laughs or the softness of their hair when he had been able to braid it before they headed off to school. He does not know the color of his mother’s eyes.

O’Malley makes him forget and Caboose cannot write home now.

He does not remember that he wanted to.

 

 


End file.
